Learner drivers on motorways? About time

A YEAR or so ago I ticked off another entry on the petrolhead bucket list; I maxed a car on a limit-free stretch of German autobahn.

Two things stick out from that afternoon somewhere near Stuttgart. The first is that as it was a Skoda Fabia Estate with four hefty Brits and their luggage aboard, the point at which it physically wouldn’t go any faster wasn’t actually all that quick. Secondly – and more importantly – the discipline of other drivers meant it felt far safer had I attempted to do the illegal thing and pull off the same trick on the autobahn’s British equivalent.

I’ve long moaned about what motorway driving’s all too often about. Impatient sales reps in Audi A4s driving inches off your back bumper. Lorry drivers sauntering through 50mph average speed zones at whatever speed their Scania feels happiest. People who cut across all three lanes sans indicator to make their turnoff at the last possible moment. Oh, and the chap in the battered Peugeot 206 who was so incensed by another driver he decided to stop in the middle lane of the M6 before lowering his window and flicking another motorist the finger.

Motorways are the fastest roads in the UK yet – in my experience at least – home to the worst driving. So plans to let up ‘n’ coming motorists learn how to use them are well overdue.

It defies logic that when I passed my test a couple of years ago I was able to jump into my 998cc Mini Mayfair – a car barely capable of the motorway speed limit – and drive down the M57 on a shopping trip to Warrington. Yet while the current theory test does touch on motorway driving, it seems silly not to go over it in the practical tests at all.

Obviously this does pose one big problem – although not one that’ll affect you in the North West, where lots of motorways criss-cross the M6 as it snakes its way up the country. If you live in Norfolk, Cornwall, or the far-away bits of Scotland and Wales, there are no motorways.

Perhaps we could either set up a scheme that allows learners to travel over and spend a day learning these roads, because it is important that the next generation of drivers knows that there is no such a thing as a slow lane on motorways and that those chevrons painted onto the roads on the busier bits haven’t been put there for fun. It also seems a bit bonkers that you need no practice whatsoever before being allowed to slot a family hatchback into a 70mph torrent of busy traffic.

The fact is the speed I cracked in a borrowed Skoda in a foreign country felt safer than the M62 does most nights. Making people learn the ropes is long overdue.

Read more of David’s work

Recommended Blogs

Unauthorised use and/or duplication of any material from this blog without express and written permission from this site’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to David Simister and Life On Cars with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Unless stated otherwise, all text is copyrighted to David Simister and Life On Cars. Images are copyrighted to David Simister and Life On Cars, or reproduced for editorial purposes from manufacture publicity material and Newspress.